helpful. He crawled out and said, “He’s in shock and shouldn’t be moved and ought to have a transfusion. But we have to move him if I’m to do anything at all. On what?”
There was a discarded door in the toolhouse. They moved him on that.
They laid Malachai on the billiard table in the gameroom and then massed lamps and candles so that Dan would have light.
Dan said, “I have to go into him. Massive internal hemorrhage. I’ve got to tie it off or there’s no chance at all. How? With what?” He leaped on the edge of the table, swaying not in fatigue or weakness but in agony of frustration. He cried, “Oh, God!” Dan stopped swaying. “A knife, Randy?”
“My hunting knife, the one I shave with? It’s sharp as a razor, almost.”
“No, Too big, too thick. How about steak knives?” “Sure, steak knives.”
The short-bladed steak knives even looked like lancets. The Judge and Randy’s mother had bought the set in Denmark on their summer in Europe in ‘fifty-four. They were the finest and sharpest steak knives Randy had ever used. He found them in the silver chest and called, “How many?”
“T’wo will do.”
From the dining room Helen called, “I’ve put on water to boil-a big pot.” The dinner fire had been going and Helen had piled on fat wood so it roared and Dan would soon have the means of sterilizing his instruments.
Randy put them into the pot to boil. After that, at Dan’s direction he put in his fine-nosed fishing pliers. Florence Wechek ran across the road for darning needles. Lib found metal hair clips that would clamp an artery. Randy’s six-pound nylon line off the spinning reel would have to do for sutures. There was enough soap to cleanse Dan’s hands.
Dan went into the dining room, fretting, waiting for the pot and his instruments to boil. It was hopeless, he knew. In spite of everything they might do sepsis was almost inevitable, but now it was the shock and the hemorrhage he couldn’t lick. He wondered whether it would be possible to rig up a saline solution transfusion. They had the ingredients, salt and water and fire; and somewhere, certainly, rubber tubing. He would not give up Malachai. He wanted to save Malachai, capable, quiet, and strong, more than he had ever wanted to save anybody in his years as a physician. So many people died for nothing. Malachai was dying for something.
In the gameroom Helen was at work, quick and competent. She had found their last bottle of Scotch, except what might remain in Randy’s decanter upstairs, and was cleansing the wound with it. Randy and Lib stood beside her. The pool of blood in the round hole ebbed and did not rise again.
The water was boiling in the big iron pot when Randy walked into the dining room and touched Dan’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m afraid it’s all over.”
In a dark corner of the room where she thought she would be out of the way and not a bother, Hannah Henry had been sitting in an old scarred maple rocker. The rocker began to move in slow cadence, and she moaned in this cadence for the dead, arms folded over her empty breasts as if holding a baby except that where the baby had been there was nothing.
Dan Gunn went into the gameroom and saw that Randy was correct, that Malachai was gone. His shoulders felt heavy. He was aware that his head throbbed and eyes burned. There was nothing more to do except empty the makeshift sterilizer with its ridiculous makeshift tools. He did this in the kitchen sink. Yet when he saw the knives and the pliers and the hair clips steaming he realized they were not really so ridiculous. If he was very careful and skillful, he could make do with such tools. They had not and probably could not have saved Malachai. They might save someone else. A century ago the tools had been no better and the knowledge infinitely less. Out of death, life; an immutable truth. Helen was at his side. He said, “Thanks, Helen, for the try. You’re the best unregistered nurse in the world.”
“I’m sorry it was for nothing.”
“Maybe it wasn’t for nothing. I’ll just keep these and try to add to them. I wonder if we could find a small bag somewhere? Any little traveling bag would do.”
“I have one. A train case.”
“We’ll start here, then, and build another kit.” His eyes hurt.
Who in Fort Repose could build him another pair of glasses, or give him new eyes?
At nine o’clock that night Randy’s knees began to quiver and his brain refused further work and begged to quit, a reaction, he knew, to the fight on the bridge and what had gone before and after, and lack of sleep. It was his wedding night. He had been married at noon that same day, which seemed incredible. Noon was a life ago.
But now that he was married, he thought it only right that he and Lib have a room to themselves and the privacy accorded a married couple. All the bedroom space was taken and he hated to evict anyone. After all, they were all his guests. Yet since it was inevitable that beds and rooms be shifted around, the victim would have to be Ben Franklin, since Ben was the junior male. Ben would have to give up his room and take the couch in Randy’s apartment and Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Bragg would move into Ben’s room.
He was sitting on his couch, trying to still his quivering legs, face in his hands, thinking of this. Lib sat behind the bar drinking a warm limeade. She was thinking of the problem also but was reluctant to mention it, feeling that it was the husband’s duty and she should allow him to bring it up.
Her father came in, a thin and wan Caesar in his sandals and white robe. Bill McGovern had been standing guard over the trussed prisoner, wondering the while that he had killed a man that day and felt no guilt at the time or after. It was like stepping on a roach. He had just been relieved by Two-Tone Henry, who had left his house of mourning to assume the duty. Bill asked for Dan. Randy lifted his head and told him that Dan, exhausted by being too long on his feet, slept. “Well, I’ll tell you, then, but I don’t suppose it will do any good tonight.”
He spoke directly to his daughter. “I didn’t know what to give you for a wedding present, Elizabeth. There’s a good deal of real estate in Cleveland but I don’t suppose it’ll ever be worth much now. There are bonds and stock certificates in our safe deposit vault right here in Fort Repose, and the cash-well, the Confederate money in Randy’s chest is just as good. You can have the house and property down the road, if you want it, but I don’t think anybody can ever live there unless electricity comes back. So I thought, what can I give Lib and Randy? I talked it over this morning with Dan. He made a suggestion and we decided to give you a present jointly, from the best man and the father of the bride.”
Bill looked from one to the other and saw they were interested. “We are jointly making you a present of this whole apartment. Dan is going to move in with me.”
Lib said, “That’s perfectly wonderful, Father!”
Bill said, hesitantly, “Only, if Dan’s asleep I don’t think we ought to disturb him, do you?”
“No, not tonight,” Lib said. She kissed her father, and she kissed her husband, and she went across the hall to her old room. Randy fell across the couch and slept. Presently Graf jumped up beside him and snuggled under his arm.
At noon Monday the man with the bat was hung from a girder supporting the bandstand roof in Marines Park. All the regular traders and a number of strangers were in the park. Randy ordered that the corpse not be cut down until sunset. He wanted the strangers to be impressed and spread the word beyond Fort Repose.
While he had not planned it, on this day he accepted the first enlistments in what came to be known as Braggs Troop, although in orders he called it the Fort Repose Provisional Com pany. Seven men volunteered that day, including Fletcher Kennedy, who had been an Air Force fighter pilot, and Link Haslip, a West Point cadet who had been home on Christmas leave on The Day. He created them provisional lieutenants of infantry. The other five were even younger-boys who had finished six months of Reserve training after high school or had been in the National Guard.
After the execution, Randy posted the notices he had typed earlier and brought to the park in his uniform pocket. The first read:
On 17 April the following highwaymen were killed on the covered bridge: Mickey Cahane, of Las Vegas and Boca Raton, a gambler and racketeer; Arch Fleggert, Miami, occupation unknown; Leroy Settle, Fort Repose.
On 18 April Thomas “Casey” Killinger, also of Las Vegas, and the fourth member of the band which murdered Mr. and Mrs. James Hickey and robbed and assaulted Dr. Daniel Gunn, was hung on this spot.
The second notice was shorter:
On 17 April Technical Sergeant Malachai Henry (USAF, reserve) died of a wound received on the covered bridge while defending Fort Repose.
Chapter 12
Early in May a tube in the Admiral’s radio flared and died, cutting off the voice of the world outside.
